Saturday, April 30, 2016

I’ve always
prided myself on careful research on the historical characters
who star in my novels. I’ve certainly done so in Mozart’s Wife, and although there are those who don't like my
characterizations, there aren’t many who can reasonably disparage the research.
Interpretation of fact, when dealing with historical characters, is always
tricky. We weren’t there and we’ll never know what exactly did happen.
All we have are the documents, letters, diaries, newspapers and hearsay. From
those, the historical writer does the best that he/she can.Two hundred and fifty years (roughly) is a
long time for “the truth” to survive.

My Mozart is another kind of story. While the
characters are the same people who appear in
Mozart’s Wife, they are viewed through another narrator’s eyes. As in Rashomon—or in many court cases—witnesses,
even those with the best intentions, often tell conflicting stories. Back in
the mid-eighties, when I wrote My Mozart,
I was unable to discover much about the life of Anna Gottlieb. What there was in
German and not translated or easily available here. As a result, I
fictionalized my heroine. The historical Anna and the one I created are, in many
ways, quite different.

Here is a
brief outline of what I have since learned about the historical Anna Gottlieb.
She was born into a theatrical family who worked for the National Theater, just
as mine was, however, in real life, she was one of four daughters. Anna was
five when she played her first noted role at the Burgtheater.Aged twelve, she played Barbarina in Mozart’s
Figaro. At fifteen she played ‘Amande’ in Wranitzky’s Oberon, King of The Elves. At seventeen, she was Mozart’s Pamina in
The Magic Flute at The Theater Am
Weiden, which would be the peak of her career. According to Agnes Selby, author of the
well-respectedConstanze, Mozart’s Beloved,a much older Anna was to remember: "The
immortal Mozart created Pamina for me, and the same voice which is now
unpleasant to you, was the delight of the great master, and I was, proud as a
queen, carried on the waves of applause."She also recalled his gift of a
beautiful fan given her by Mozart in appreciation of her artistry.

After Mozart’s death, Anna “defected” to the Leopoldstadt Theater. In 1798 she
played the part of ‘Hulda’ in The Nymph
of the Danube. She was famous as a mimic, and she often parodied reigning
prima donnas. According to Grove, during this time she was “a mainstay of the
company.”

The
Napoleonic Wars ruined the economy and disrupted the ancient social and
patronage system. After a four year’s absence, occasioned by war, Anna returned
to the Viennese stage in 1813. Sadly, her voice and looks were now in decline.
As a result, she now played smaller roles in comedies and often played old women.
In 1828, a new director of the theater, Steinkeller, dismissed her. Lacking a
pension, she fell into poverty. She unsuccessfully petitioned the Emperor for a
pension. In 1848, she contacted the newspaper editor L.V. Frankl, to describe
her plight, and he organized a fundraising campaign which sent her to Salzburg
to view the unveiling of the Mozart memorial, which she longed to see.In one memoir concerning that day, Anna is
thus described: “There entered a tall, thin and eccentric looking old woman…” She was the last surviving singer who had
actually worked with Mozart.

So it
appears that My Mozart is more “historical
fiction” than semi-biographical. In my defense, I’ll plead that I’d
fallen in love with the composer. As anyone who has caught the all-consuming Amadeus
bug knows, this isn’t a minor ailment, nor is it unusual among people who adore
music. The effect of a Mozart Possession
is visceral, shattering, as I’d imagine a gigantic dose of
Ecstasy. I was Mozart’s fan, body and soul, and I wanted to write a story which
expressed my love, my longing, and, most of all, the physical pleasure
which his music brought to me. To write such a story, I needed a narrator, someone who could be that
delirious, head-over-heels fan. One evening, while reading Otto Erich
Deutsche’s Documentary Biography of
Mozart , I came across this quote:

"Most painfully affected of all
by Mozart's fatal illness was Fraulein Nanina Gottlieb..."

~~~From Joseph Deiner's Memoirs,
related at Vienna, 1856

That was
when I knew who the heroine --the ultimate, passionate Mozart fan--must be!

There is
another matter to consider, too, and to me it’s not a small thing. As a writer,
I’ve created many characters, working from the rough outline in my mind, until
these “playmates” begin to talk and walk on their own, to tell me their
stories. Nanina was different. From the evening I saw Joseph Deiner’s remark, I
was visited by a presence--graceful, feminine—and deeply anguished. She came in
the dark hours and sent me to the computer to write for most of the night,
write a story as I’ve written no novel since. Pictures would arrive; I’d hit
those keys. As I worked with “her,” I typed ever faster, while a story of a
perfect first-and-only-love, of loss and of madness poured out. There was very
little editing done until much, much later.

Call it
“automatic writing” or whatever you want. I’m not a big fan of categorizing
paranormal events, although I’ve had more than a few in the seventy years I’ve
been on the planet.Whatever this unique
experience was, I felt honored to be the chosen channel for a sensitive,
talented individual—perhaps a beautiful soul from a time in Vienna where, ever
so briefly, lived and loved a matchless musical genius.

--Juliet
Waldron

And, if you've got a moment, hop on over to these other talented Books We Love Authors:

I am in the grandma zone, a long time writer and poet, posting at Crone Henge and BWL these days just because. Wish I could travel, and last year I was lucky enough to get back to the UK, specifically to Avebury to reconnect with the ancient temple. Hiking, camping, lover of solitude, cats, moons and gardens.

Sunday, April 24, 2016

Happy birthday to William Shakespeare—at least—as far as we
know, the 23rd is his natal day. I was planning to write something about him this
weekend for Possum Tracks, but other memories butted in, so I’ll try to
combine the two.

I met The Bard early because my Grandfather Liddle was a
professor of English.Shakespeare,
Milton and Chaucer were his specialties. The latter two (particularly Milton)
have sunk in reputation and in student interest here at the end of the 21st
Century. Milton's star, for various reasons has waned. Perhaps, (as I’ve heard Mrs.
Milton complained) because he’s constantly lecturing.In
Chaucer’s case, it’s language that's the problem. Let's face it, the 1390’s were a far poke back into
the mists of time. Therefore, if you try to read Chaucer just as he wrote it, luck and/or
imagination will only get you so far. Sometimes, you’ll need help translating,
which is not totally surprising when you realize that English
and German had, just some 500 years earlier, parted company.

Anyhow, Grandpa was the one to introduce
me to Shakespeare. He read Charles Lamb’s Tales From Shakespeare (1807) while sitting in his favorite corner
chair in the good light from the living room windows.

Grandpa taught at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
He’d arrived there in 1927 from Princeton, New Jersey, where he’d just finished
his doctorate. He came with his wife and three daughters during August of that year. One of the girls wasn’t yet a year old, but because
a house wasn't available, the family lived in a tent in the
Glen near the Cascades, a pretty waterfall on the Little Miami. Grandpa walked to the college most days. Professorial
colleagues, coming on horseback to welcome them to town sometimes missed both of them, even Grandma, as she
and the girls were often down by the water while she did the laundry in the creek. When she returned, hauling the few things she took down every day—including—consider this, oh ye 21st Century Moms—diapers—she’d
find calling cards pinned to the tent flap. My grandparents lived in the glen till October and
were very happy indeed to put an end to their extended camping experience and move into a
fine four square house on Xenia Avenue. For the rest of his stay on earth, every day Grandpa
walked the few blocks from that house to the college. At least in my imagination, this was the most
idyllic existence a person could devise.

But I digress, thinking about home and family. Back to The Bard! My grandparents took me to
see Shakespeare performed at Antioch, in a summer theater under the stars. The stage
was set up in front of the iconic main building. The actors were a mix of
professionals and members of the theater department. The leading roles of the courtly lovers—Lysander and Helena, Demetrius and Hermia—were actors of just the right age, shining with youth and excitement. My first Shakespeare play was to be A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Twilight crept across the broad campus and pooled darkness beneath the grand
maples. The stars emerged behind the Main building as the lights came up on stage. With those gothic
towers for a backdrop--and accompanied by the proper Mendelsohn--I entered the poet's magical world.

Some years on, my grandparents (on one of grandpa's last sabbaticals) took my mother and me to Stratford-Upon-Avon. Even better than that, the play at the theater was Richard III! There’s a kind of dirty, underground thrill for a Ricardian* while
sitting through that classic "Shake Scene" from the Tudor propaganda factory. Christopher
Plummer, then 32, played Richard. One snag—the only performance I could see was that very afternoon.
However, I was fifteen and not faint of heart where anything "Richard" was
involved. I joined a group of other school kids and got the tickets that allow you
to stand in the back, which is what we did, leaning on the wall behind the last
row of seats for the next three hours. I was so excited that I hardly noticed something that, 50+ years later, would cause a certain amount of suffering. I remember
being close to ecstatic when I arrived back at the hotel where we were all staying and talking about the performance all through supper.

A few years later, Grandfather would answer my questions about King Lear while I was facing my A levels. At least, as much as he ever "answered", for he was, by temperament, a Socratic. You often received another question instead of an answer, but it was always a good one, the kind that sent me and the rest of his students into further mental wrestlings. And, believe me, at the same time I was horribly nervous and embarrassed to be entertaining Herr Doctor Professor with my own little-girl, borrowed-from-literary criticism notions.

And so, perhaps a little weirdly, Grandpa Liddle and William Shakespeare are commingled in my imagination and in my memory, too. (I always thought they sort of looked alike.) Nowadays I'm older than Shakespeare was when he passed away, but I guess I'll never stop being amazed at what I can still learn from the characters he created and the stories he told.

I am in the grandma zone, a long time writer and poet, posting at Crone Henge and BWL these days just because. Wish I could travel, and last year I was lucky enough to get back to the UK, specifically to Avebury to reconnect with the ancient temple. Hiking, camping, lover of solitude, cats, moons and gardens.

Saturday, April 16, 2016

buy the book!"...the rich and fascinating life of this poor-boy-turned-statesman is entertaining and vivid..."Jerika, Amazon Reader

**************************************************

And now for more Possum Tracks stories:

Old folks wander in the night. We have a host of dark hours’ issues—bathroom
visits caused by decrepit plumbing, early a.m. wakefulness, aches and pains which
require a get-up-and-stretch or—perhaps—an analgesic and a cup of herbal tea. Snoring,
wakefulness, illnesses and a whole host of things, a decade back, brought my
husband and I to move into separate sleeping quarters, in an attempt to score the
now mythical “good night’s sleep”. In our house, too, there are cats
who multiply the night time Alarums and
Excursions.

B0B is our tiger boy-from-the-hood /spy-who-came-in-from-the-cold.
Old habits die hard, so he still keeps a paw in the local night-time goings on.
As spring arrives, there are bunnies,
voles, and mice on the move again, more especially their feckless young, which make
easy prey. We wouldn’t know about that, of course, in our
human cocoon, but B0B does. He’ll stand on my husband’s chest and meow if he
wants to go out. 3 a.m. or 4, he really doesn’t care how you feel about this,
especially if there is an enemy abroad, such as the young neighbor
tom now leaving some sort of smart-ass gangsta tag on a nearby tree or trash can.

No! This Will Not
Stand! As soon as it comes to his keen nose’s attention, B0B has to get out
there to rectify the situation by adding his own p-mail counter message. If
the other guy is still around, that can lead to a confrontation, resulting in Miau-geschrie as Mozart describes the
sound, or Katzenmusik, as Google Translate
does.

Another feature of nights in this house, I may be a grandma, but I confess I can still wake up screaming from a
nightmare, a thing which exasperates everyone else who lives around here, from my husband to the
cats. Some past life experience, or, maybe, some random programming from deep within the ancient
brain stored at the top of my spine—a poor
little shrew sort of critter, chased by a monstrous version of B0B—erupts
into the classic night–terror.

OH NO... OH-NO-NO-NO! IT SEES ME!

On these occasions, I scream. That either wakes me up, or brings my husband in to shout, "For God's Sake, woman!!" In that case, I’m the pain in the collective wanna-be-sleeping-ass.

The other night, however, I managed to wake myself up from a
near-miss with one of these scream dreams. This particular one had been of the War of the Worlds variety,
the kind where you are about to be sucked up onto a booming malevolence hovering overhead.
Fortunately, on this occasion, before the mental crescendo of terror, I’d managed to come to by myself.

Still feeling jumpy, I eventually righted myself for a walk to the
bathroom. Might as well do that, since I’m
already awake. However, upon rounding a corner into a space nominally illuminated by a night-light, I
encountered something I hadn’t expected, a moving silhouette, humanoid, the head round. The body was tall, very thin and the arms seemed to dangle
in a loose and unmatched way, like something out ofThe Walking Dead.

I shrieked. It did too, so I hauled off and punched it in
the chest as hard as I could. After all, the thing was bigger, but it didn’t appear all that steady on its feet.

Maybe, if I could knock it off balance, I could escape…

A thud and a warm breast bone crunched against my knuckles. The creature
spoke.“Ow!” and then “Hey! What the hell?”

As I said at the beginning of this, old folks wander in the
night. As you might have expected, my husband and I had unexpectedly encountered
one another in the half-dark, and both of us, still groggy, had had quite a scare. Hard on the heels of fear had come irritation, then embarrassment, at last resolving in the only possible way--with a laugh.~~Juliet WaldronAll my historical novels:http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004HIX4GS

And while you're reading, hop on over to these other talented Books We Love Authors:

I am in the grandma zone, a long time writer and poet, posting at Crone Henge and BWL these days just because. Wish I could travel, and last year I was lucky enough to get back to the UK, specifically to Avebury to reconnect with the ancient temple. Hiking, camping, lover of solitude, cats, moons and gardens.

This, inane as it may sound to you, is an excellent response. It shows that you haven’t been wasting your time. If you haven’t been
training this person for long, maybe you’ve lucked out and are working with one of the smart ones.

Next, it’s time to flop down beside her chair. Stretch out really long, forepaws and
backpaws extending in such a sexy way that, just for a flash, you show off the length of your claws. Bow your belly into one of those easy arcs that screams how flexible you are. Your tiger pelt catches the light with in a sublime halo of red-gold guard hairs.

Do this whole-heartedly, as if you’ll never arise again. Sometimes,
for added effect, you may look over your shoulder and send one of those come hither blinks at the person before
turning your head away, finally resting it, in a half disinterested manner, upon the
floor again.

As soon as your person—the old ones, like the ones I have, will most certainly grunt and groan and make
a huge fuss because they have to sit down cross-legged on the floor, whingeing on and on about “vertigo” “last week's surgery” “hip/knee
replacements” or whatever is currently ailing their show-offy-monkey balancing-on-their-hind-legs skeleton. Do NOT ever, ever cave. They can get down onto the floor beside you--and, if you have anything to say about it--they will.

As soon as they are all the way down and are just starting to pet (or
groom) you, jump up and walk away. I know this may be tough, especially if they've presciently begun to execute the Aunt Patti Frequent Flyer Eagle Star Super Premium Top Gold level Wuffle which rubs all around your spine in the very bestest way. At such times, you must exercise will power. You want this session to be a win, don't you? Remember, consistency is the key to successful person training--even if that means also being consistently-inconsistent, and always at those times when they are relying on you to do what you did four times last week.Leaving the scene doesn't necessarily mean distance. In fact, at first, it’s
better if it isn’t, because then your person will continue attempting to interact, calling
and enticing you with mousie fingers to return. But if you're going to close the deal, you must stick to the program and play hard-to-get. You
might even flick your tail at them as you turn away and head out to the kitchen food bowl for
a crunchy.

But don't be in a hurry. Bide your time. Be patient. Maybe have a big drink, too, or even visit the cellar cat box. While you are doing that, though, remain ever-vigilent. As soon as their annoying self-centered typing resumes, trot upstairs and begin the process all over again.

***

But don't start feeling sorry for them, though. Don't waste your time. Sometimes, okay, they do get to type a lot, because you're napping on the couch on the cat furniture on the other side of the table upon a special fleecy blanket or upon a Queen bed upstairs. You don't really need to be entertained, just at that moment. Besides, this person takes pretty good care of you. The cat box is effectively scooped. There is always a bowl with the aforementioned crunchies and daily fresh water--if that senile co-diety who also holds court here didn't keep standing in it.

If basic things like housekeeping aren't to your liking, you'll soon make those feelings clear. Believe me, persons--this is not a threat, it's a promise! I'll take this weighty subject up at our next person training lesson.

I am in the grandma zone, a long time writer and poet, posting at Crone Henge and BWL these days just because. Wish I could travel, and last year I was lucky enough to get back to the UK, specifically to Avebury to reconnect with the ancient temple. Hiking, camping, lover of solitude, cats, moons and gardens.

Sunday, April 3, 2016

Once this attic was empty, but entire lives are stored up
there now. When we arrived here, 30 years ago, the house was completely empty.
At closing, my husband requested that nothing be left behind, and nothing was,
so we began with a blank slate. Now, thirty ++ years later, the whole thing is
jammed. First, came a set of rustic oak chairs from our Tennessee sojourn and a
few end tables. Then, in rapid succession came my grandmother’s stuff—the sad
remains that the early bird relatives had deemed unimportant—and then came my
mother’s boxes and trunks when she entered a nursing home—and next came his
mother’s many photo albums, a huge collection going back into the 1930’s, after
she too ended up in “incarcerated”. Sadly, we can’t recognize more than half
the people who are posed there, giving us tight New England smiles in
those old pictures pictures.

Now all of it gathers dust. Some important boxes filled with
memorabilia I would LOVE to find have vanished—gone without a trace when
I went back to locate them later. Perhaps they’ve fallen into some Twilight
Zone like void that may exist in the upper stories of houses. My husband suggests they've fallen into the same inter-dimensional crease where the lost socks go.

We’ve thought of cleaning it, of sorting through, of discarding
most and preserving the few things that might still have some interest and/or
value to the next generation. Then summer comes again and we abandon the place
for another six months. Next winter, we think, next spring, but somehow it
never happens.Our stuff is there, too.
A host of coffee mugs emblazoned with the names of once famous and now dead Tech
companies, untouched boxes of tractor-feed paper, and woolen tartan skirts made
in Scotland made for 70 lb H.S. girl, as well as jackets and note books from 5th
and 6th Form English school days—“O” level tide-pool biology and
“A” level European History, adjacent to my husband’s brightly
colored slacks purchased for 1970’s casual Fridays.

There is a solar bicyclist who no longer pedals, a strobe light from the Roaring Sixties, a trunk full of 78 records (Big Band, Classical, Jazz) which belonged to my mother, and a bust which my brother-in-law picked out of some East Village trash heap back before gentrification had driven out the artists. My huband's gun club trophies are parked on a rickety bookcase.

Deeper in, there are my own manuscripts--a rejection pile--that all writers back in the day accumulated--pages thumbed through and smelling of cigarette smoke. (We went broke mailing the stuff to agents/publishers and then having it sent back via SASE.) I even have a collection of dreary literary criticism from the 1920's simply because they they had my Grandfather Liddle's signature inside them, and I couldn't bear to throw them away.

I am in the grandma zone, a long time writer and poet, posting at Crone Henge and BWL these days just because. Wish I could travel, and last year I was lucky enough to get back to the UK, specifically to Avebury to reconnect with the ancient temple. Hiking, camping, lover of solitude, cats, moons and gardens.

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I am in the grandma zone, a long time writer and poet, posting at Crone Henge and BWL these days just because. Wish I could travel, and last year I was lucky enough to get back to the UK, specifically to Avebury to reconnect with the ancient temple. Hiking, camping, lover of solitude, cats, moons and gardens.